7 Tips for a Winning Print Ad: For Your Unique Brand

Q: How can small business advertisers get better results from print ads?
A: Here are 7 Tips for a Winning Ad

Today’s question came to me from a friend who publishes a monthly magazine. She asked if I could give her some tips she can pass along to her small business advertisers to make good ads that get results. That’s a great question.

You want creative and smart ways to connect with the people you want to attract.

Remember, make every ad aligned with your brand message, because it’s what sets you apart and makes you memorable.

Here are our seven top tips:
Use them as a checklist for a greater ROI on your marketing spend.

1. Have one message.
I know it’s hard to whittle it down but you need one impactful message. If it can be creative and unique, even better. Keep it aligned with your brand.

2. Use impactful imagery.
People look at pictures of people: science proves it again and again. So use pictures of people when it supports your creative message.

3. Quality design.
Quality design gives your brand credibility. Fight for white space: don’t clutter it up! Give your viewers’ eyes a place to focus so they can get your message.

4. Avoid coupons.
Don’t default to coupons or bargains. You don’t want to train your customers to buy from you only when you have a sale or a deal. You’ll see it with a lot of furniture stores, clothing stores, and pizza parlors. You want to build value with your unique brand.

5. Visual Hierarchy.
The most important information gets top billing. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bigger font, because you can get just as much attention with a small font – if it’s designed intelligently. This concept is similar to someone whispering in a crowded room – whispering is a great way to get attention.

6. Contact Information.
It seems like a no-brainer, but I’ve seen it, and so has my friend with her advertisers: people send in ads without the necessary contact information. You need to give them the way you want them to contact you- your website, phone number, or your location.

7. Your call to action.
What do you want them to do? Do you want them to visit your website, schedule an appointment, vote for you, buy your book? Let them know what they’re supposed to do.

Now you have a winning ad.

Q: How many times should we run our ad?
A: Keep running it.

Don’t make the mistake of running an ad once or twice. Decide on the publications your ideal customers are reading and commit to each publication’s recommended sales cycle, depending on the number of issues distributed each year.

Not all advertisers are trying to just sell you ad space. On the contrary, professional advertisers have experience and can help you get the most success in advertising with them. Your success is in their best interest to keep you as an advertiser.

Show up once with your winning ad, and people will notice. Appear a second time and they’ll remember you from before. After seeing your ad a number of times, you’ll be creating memorability and you’ll have established credibility for your brand when they’re ready to buy.

Another benefit of a consistent ad campaign is the options for creative ways to attract the people you want to serve. You can build a series of ads, keeping a consistent theme aligned with your brand design & message.

Campaigns can be a lot of fun and a great way to differentiate you from the competition. Small businesses don’t have the marketing budgets of the big guys, but we can be inspired by the ideas and learn a few lessons, so have some fun with these 17 “best” ad campaigns.

A plan for the journey to make your brand remarkably different.

Buying ad space, whether in print or online, works best when it’s part of a marketing plan. Even a simple plan will help you leverage each ad spend. It will keep you focused and enable you to measure the effectiveness of each marketing investment.

Lean on your advertising resources for reports and see how close you are coming to achieving your objectives. (You did establish your objectives and goals for your ad spend, yes?) The cool thing is that tracking results gives you important feedback on how well you are connecting with your ideal customer.

Advertising is part of the continuous journey we are on as business owners and marketers: knowing who our ideal customers are, what matters to them, speaking in a language that they can relate to, and delivering solutions that thrill them. Let’s keep learning and be remarkably different!

The video below is a test for our new monthly video subscription for amateur smartphone videographers (AKA small businesses who want to connect with people and get their message out).
Give us your feedback–we’d be thrilled to hear from you!